"Investigators spoke with the editor-in-chief and journalists from the Komsomolskaya Pravda [newspaper], who had spoken with a Ukrainian military service member, and [Russian investigators] have received the Ukrainian citizen's contact information. Investigators have already contacted him and we will soon question him as a witness in the investigation of a criminal case on the use of banned means and methods in waging war in southeastern Ukraine," Vladimir Markin said.
Late on Monday, Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an interview with a Ukrainian airbase employee, who said he knows how the Malaysian Boeing crashed.
The employee, who claims to be an eyewitness, said a Ukrainian air force Su-25 combat jet took off from an airbase in eastern Dnipropetrovsk carrying air-to-air missiles and returned without them on the same day Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine.
The airbase worker said he remembered the pilot saying "the wrong plane" and "the plane was in the wrong place at the wrong time" after he returned from the flight.
On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk killing all the 298 people on board, two-thirds of them Dutch. Kiev has accused eastern Ukraine's independence supporters of shooting the plane down even though the latter have repeatedly stated that they had no means to do so.
In September, the Dutch Safety Board, heading the investigation into the crash, issued a preliminary report suggesting that the passenger plane had been hit by "a large number of high-energy objects." The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the document did not answer the questions Moscow was interested in.
In mid-November, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was concerned about the delays in the crash investigation.
Last Saturday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the Netherlands would release the progress report on the crash before the end of 2014 and that the inquiry would be continued throughout 2015.
